Damage

Damage in Hearthstone is a particular infliction of harm upon heroes or minions, measured by a number which is deducted from their Armor (if they have any) or Health. If a character's Health is reduced to zero (or below), it will be killed. Note that other types of harm that can be inflicted to characters (such as destroy effects, Freeze effects and Equality) are not considered damage for game purposes and, although most damage is dealt through combat, dealing damage is not considered an "attack" for game purposes.

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Heroes with Armor will have any damage deducted from their Armor before their Health: any damage beyond the character's current Armor will be deducted from their Health. Armor can prevent a hero's Health from being reduced, but will not prevent damage from being dealt: damage dealt only to Armor still counts as damage for the purpose of effects such as Water Elemental and Floating Watcher.[1]

Characters which are below their maximum Health are considered damaged, and may activate Enrage effects or other synergies. Damaged characters can have their Health restored through healing effects.

Any character whose current Health is below its maximum Health is considered damaged, and their current Health will be displayed in red. Some effects (such as Enrage and Battle Rage) require or synergize with damaged characters, while others (such as Backstab) require undamaged characters. Restoring a character to its maximum Health will remove its damaged status, and thus remove any Enrage effects.

For additional details about the damaged status and a list of related cards, see Damaged.

Damaging effects and combat damage work by creating and resolving Damage Events:

Damaging effects that affect a single target create one Damage Event, and then immediately resolve it.

Usually, damaging effects with an area of effect (i.e., effects that deal damage to all characters of a certain type) first create all Damage Events (one for each affected character, in play order), and then resolve all Damage Events (queuing and resolving triggers) in play order. Exceptions are:

Swipe creates Damage Events first for the target character and then for all other enemy characters in reverse play order; Damage Events are then resolved in the same order.

Example: Frothing Berserker will activate as older minions are damaged by Lightbomb and may grow large enough in Attack to subsequently get killed by Lightbomb.

Some damaging effects that affect "multiple targets" (Bouncing Blade, Greater Arcane Missiles, Cobra Shot and all the effects that "deal a certain amount of damage randomly split among all characters with a given characteristic") shoot a number of individual "missiles" each with a random target: each missile creates a Damage Event which is immediately resolved, before choosing at random the target for the next missile.

Spells that deal a certain amount of damage randomly split among all characters with a given characteristic (Arcane Missiles, Spreading Madness, Avenging Wrath, Volcano and Timepiece of Horror) interact with Spell Damage and Prophet Velen in the following way: in order to determine the total damage of the spell, take its base damage, add its controller's Spell Damage bonus (if any) and then, if its controller also controlled an unsilenced Prophet Velen since the last Aura Update (Other) Step, double the total damage (multiple Prophet Velens stack); the spell will then shoot that number of missiles, each one still having a proposed damage of 1 regardless of its controller's Spell Damage and Prophet Velens.

All other damaging effects that affect "multiple targets" first create all Damage Events in a given order, then resolve all Damage Events in the same order:

Betrayal makes target minion create two Damages Events in the order left-right. Notice that the source of the Damage Event is the minion, not the spell: thus bonuses from Spell Damage and Prophet Velen do not apply, while minion abilities like poison, Water Elemental or Mistress of Pain do apply;

Cone of Cold creates and resolves all Damage Events, then freezes the affected minions (even if the damage was reduced to 0 by Divine Shield);

Imp-losion deals damage then queries how much damage was dealt: for example, Divine Shield sets the damage to 0, while Commanding Shout does not modify how much damage was considered to be dealt.

Creating a Damage Event

Each Damage Event has its own source (usually, the minion or the damaging effect that creates it; the only exception is Betrayal, whose Damage Events have the targeted minion as their source), its own target and a proposed damage:

Damage Events created during combat by the attacker and the defender have a proposed damage equal to the Attack value of that character.

Damage Events created by Fatigue have a proposed damage equal to 1 plus the number of times Fatigue has already dealt damage to that player. Note that the Fatigue counter never resets, even if the player replaces their Hero or restocks their deck through shuffle into deck effect and successfully draws cards for a while.

If the source of the Damage Event is Arcane Blast, add twice that bonus instead.

If the source of the Damage Event is a Hero Power and its controller also controls an unsilenced Fallen Hero since the last Aura Update (Other) Step, add its bonus to the proposed damage; multiple Fallen Heroes stack.

Then, if the target is Immune or the Damage Event's proposed damage is 0, the Damage Event is prevented and has no other consequences. Otherwise, continue with the following steps, in order.

If the target has Divine Shield, the Divine Shield is removed and the Damage Event's proposed damage is reduced to 0.

If the target of the Damage Event is a hero, predamage triggers queue and resolve: Animated Armor has an early priority and always triggers first, and then Bolf Ramshield and Ice Block trigger in order of play. Notice that, whenever a predamage trigger queries how much is the proposed damage of a Damage Event that targets a hero, any Cursed Blade equipped by that hero will double the reported damage.

Animated Armor triggers if the Damage Event has a proposed damage greater than 1, reducing the proposed damage of the Damage Event to 1.

Example: Animated Armor normally does not trigger if a hero takes 1 damage, but Cursed Blade's effect doubles the reported damage to 2 and thus Animated Armor will trigger for no effect in this scenario.

Bolf Ramshieldprevents the Damage Event, then creates a new Damage Event whose source and proposed damage are the same as the original Damage Event's but whose target is Bolf Ramshield (and thus "when this minion deals damage" triggers will still run). If a player has multiple Bolf Ramshields in play, only the first one to enter play will trigger and intercept the damage when their hero takes damage.

Ice Block triggers if the Damage Event's proposed damage is greater than or equal to its hero's current Health, preventing the Damage Event and creating an Enchantment attached to the hero which says "Become Immune until the turn ends".

Finally, the character's current Health+Armor is reduced by the Damage Event's proposed damage: damage is deducted from Armor first, and any damage beyond the character's current Armor is then deducted from their Health.

If the target is affected by Commanding Shout, its current Health is prevented from dropping below 1; however, Commanding Shout does not modify how much damage was considered to be dealt (for example when queried by Imp-losion).

Resolving a Damage Event

If the Damage Event was prevented or if it did not change the character's current Health+Armor total (including due to Divine Shield and Commanding Shout), it will not run any triggers.

Otherwise, on-damage triggers (listed in the following table) queue and resolve in play order.

Finally, if the source of the Damage Event is a minion, it loses Stealth (even if the Damage Event's proposed damage is 0, but not if the Damage Event was prevented).

Divine Shield, Taunt, LifestealWickerflame spent years as a recruit for the Goons, never making the big-time because he always fired his chest-cannon too slowly. "Hey," he thought, "maybe if I keep my beard lit on fire, I can do this faster." BOOM, promoted.

The following cards have effects that trigger from damage being dealt (including the Poisonous ability, which stands for "Destroy any minion damaged by this minion"; for a breakdown by trigger type, see Triggered effect#Character damage), or that specifically alter the amount of damage dealt to targets, or that are otherwise related to damage. Not listed here are cards with Spell Damage, which increase damage dealt by spells with damaging effects (see Spell Damage for a list), cards with Divine Shield, which lower to 0 the damage dealt to shielded minions (see Divine Shield for a list), and Immune effects, which prevent any damage dealt to protected characters (see Immune for a list).

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